Miners were jailed for disturbing order in a county in North China's Hebei Province after protesting over unpaid wages, though their hometown government has said their "requests were reasonable."

Four migrant workers were detained in November 2015 after 180 miners - most of whom are from Langao county, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province - protested to the Qinglong government over the fact that their employer, the Jiangcheng mining company, owed them several years' wages topping 15 million yuan ($2.3 million).

The four were sentenced to between two and four years behind bars for disturbing social order on May 9, the Legal Mirror reported.

Several miners sent a joint letter to the Langao government in November 2015 to complain about the situation, and Langao sent a team to Qinglong in December to negotiate with the local government.

The Qinglong authorities ignored them.

"I never ran into this kind of incident in 20 years of fighting for migrant workers' rights… the Qinglong government did not settle it in accordance with standard procedure," Nie Bin, a deputy director of the judicial bureau of Langao and member of the team sent to Qinglong, was quoted as saying by the Legal Mirror.

"The workers' requests are reasonable and they just want to safeguard their rights," said Nie.

Nie added that "they neither interfered with the government work nor blocked traffic."

Qinglong government told the Legal Mirror that they are working on the incident.

Legal Mirror